20100629

I don't know the next time I will be able to post. I leave you with this: my new favorite song.

Camping out

Friday night, I got to camp out for the last time before I leave. Usually, I do it at least once every summer, but the past few have been so busy I haven’t been able to. Next time I think I’ll use the bigger tent, but it was great to look at the stars and see the fireflies.


Camping out in the backyard has been a big thing in my house. We have even camped out in the house when it’s too cold to be outside or when friends are over. But that little pup tent is probably getting too small for me. I can’t even stretch out all the way diagonally. I’d say it’s probably about four feet by four feet or so; a little bit smaller than five foot three me.

And I couldn’t talk about camping without telling a story of when I was five. My sister and I decided we wanted to camp out in the backyard one night. All through the evening my dad kept talking about bears and how we should be careful. Just as soon as it was dark and we were settled into the tent, noises came crawling. It was a bear! Pawing at our tent! We got so scared that we wouldn’t stay outside that night even though that bear was just our dad (There aren’t many bears in Nebraska where we were at the time, but PA there are a few more). I don’t think we’ll ever be able to live that one down and now the rest of the world knows too.

20100626

US 1-2 Ghana and K'naan

The US got itself knocked out of the World Cup this afternoon. To be honest, I’m happy and I was hoping for a loss. No, I’m not unpatriotic, but I think my reasoning is fairly logical.


1. We would have lost even more horribly to Uruguay I think. I just didn’t want to face them. Especially with South American teams doing so well this year.

2. I want soccer to advance in America without the World Cup. I get so frustrated when people jump on the bandwagon for things like this. They really don’t support the team. And is it really supporting when they’re winning? It would be so much better if soccer were to become even more popular without the help of the World Cup. We should focus on developing players to be the best instead of developing them to play with the best, i.e., World Cup champions.



On a World Cup musical note, I have discovered a new artist I’m going to be looking into a lot more; K’naan. His song Wavin’ Flag was selected as a part of the World Cup soundtrack and it sounds awesome. He’s a Somalian rapper who lives in Canada. From what I understand, he’s not totally like other rappers in his content. His albums had some explicit labels on them on iTunes, but I’m not sure what they’re for yet. I don’t know if he’s worth investing in, but for now he sounds ok, especially if you like rap/hip hop.

20100625

Oops

This is a blog post about two totally different things that are only connected by a month in 2009 and the fact that one of the events was probably an accident ( speculation of course) and the other event was an accident.


That second event happened on iTunes yesterday. I decided that I was going to buy a song. No problem there. I decided I was going to buy a Linkin Park song. I was going to buy New Divide off of the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen soundtrack with the logic that I would probably be buying the album in whole at a later date. My error came because I like so many Linkin Park songs. Not thinking, I managed to buy, download, and listen to partially What I’ve Done off of the original Transformers soundtrack before realizing that it wasn’t New Divide. Oops….. At least it wasn’t that bad of a mistake. I like What I’ve Done too and now I have both songs.

The next event was probably a mistake too, but there’s been so much media hype about it and secrecy that no one will probably know for a while what exactly happened in Michael Jackson’s death. I just wanted to share my memory of finding out about the event.

It was a hot Thursday afternoon when I was coming back from Future Soldiers. We were stuck in traffic in The Notch, which meant whatever radio station we were trying to get was fuzzing in and out with the public broadcast station in the area. We were getting more of the public radio that day and he announcer broke in to announce it. Never being a big Jackson fan, I accepted it and was slightly disappointed that I had never considered him to be a candidate for a celebrity death in the near future. When I got home, I turned on BHT to listen to some music, but wonderful Ralphie Aversa decided to break in just then and announce the “breaking news” that I had heard ten minutes earlier. I guess public radio gets news faster. There’s nothing really more to my story. I just figured I’d share it since it has been a year since Mr. Thriller died.

20100623

The F-Word

No silly, not that one. I'm talking about French. As usual, they managed to show how they can screw almost anything up. A poor showing in the World Cup first round left the French not moving on to the next one. President Nicolas Sarkozy met today with some officials in an investigation as to why their World Cup quest was such a disaster. I didn't expect some of the things to happen, but I could have told Sarcozy they wouldn't be moving on a few weeks ago.
My reason, this: there are too many superstars on the French squad. I looked at the starting XI and recognized 10 of the names. All of them were high end players and many are probably getting a little old to be on a World Cup team. Where are the youngsters? Also, it was destined to be a bad year for the French. 1998- win the World Cup. 2002- do horrible. 2006- Runners up, almost winners if it weren't for Zidane. 2010- it was supposed to be a bad year.
Now, for the newer reasons that came during the group stages. Nicolas Anelka was kicked off the team and sent home early after a "heated discussion" with the head coach Domenech. ( I don't read French, but a French tabloid headlined what was supposedly said and the english translation wasn't very nice. Anelka is denying that he said exactly that as well).
Then, in support of of Anelka, the team boycotted a training session before their last game against South Africa (France lost 2-1).
What a mess. There is supposed to be an investigation, an audit of the FFF, and probably some heads flying or at least leaving the scene in the coming future.
Thierry Henry called President Sarcozy from South Africa to set up a meeting to discuss the matter and I think that meeting is supposed to happen tomorrow. I like Henry. I have ever since I joined up with Arsenal. I was sad when he left, but still support the guy. I hope he brings a fair, level head and position to the meeting with Sarcozy. I'm not too sure what I'd do if he sided totally with Anelka. Probably cry.

In other news, both the US and England made it into the final 16. I had picked that in my bracket, but the US placed first in the group; something I wasn't expecting. Great for the US, but now the only way my final will work out is if  Spain places second in their group. Otherwise, my final match will become a semifinal.

20100618

I Made It

It feels so weird to say it, but as of Wednesday night, I am an official high school graduate. The past twelve years of my life have been spent going to school and now I don't have to anymore. I get to choose my schedule (kind of with the army).
The school had the ceremony inside instead of outside because it was supposed to thunderstorm. Of course it was sunny when all the graduates walked outside. And it was so very hot in the school gym. But I made it. When I got home, I put this as my facebook status: "I look up to the sky and nw the world is mine. I've known it all my life. I made it. I made it." I think that described pretty well how I felt right then. I've made it out of school. The words are lyrics to a song called "I Made It" by Kevin Rudolf featuring several wonderful rappers including lilWayne. In typical rap fashion most of the song is horrible, but the chorus is decent.


This is my Curious George balloon. He was the only thing I asked for for graduation, and I got him. George is such a cutie and he's a lot of fun to watch on TV and read in his books. George is very fond of hugs and will be missed when he decides to deflate.

20100614

A Milestone, I guess

It all started because Friday just didn't work out for me to mow the lawn. Saturday wasn't good either because I was gone literally all day. So that meant I had to mow Sunday. A nice rain shower in the middle of that insured that I would finish today.
So I was mowing the lawn on a nice, muggy Sunday afternoon. I had just taken a empty the bag and take a drink break. I was all ready to continue mowing. The mower started and I got about three feet before I fely something on the back of the leg.
Turns out it was a nice wasp who decided to sting me. Four times. It hurt. A lot. I hopped around a bit, went inside, came back outside and then continued to mow until the sky opened up and spilled its watery guts on NEPA.
It was my first time ever getting stung by anything. But my stings are doing a lot better today. It only feels like a small bruise. That's the end of my story.

20100611

Disney

If Disney had control of Army Basic Training, it would probably look something like this:

20100609

Accomplishments

Yesterday was a day of accomplishments. First, I finished my last academic day of high school. It's a little weird to be done, but VERY exciting to be graduating and moving on to something else in my life aka the army
The other accomplishment meant a lot more to me because it is one I have willingly and actively been pursuing for four years. I'm surprised it took me this long, but I finally broke 50 juggling a soccer ball. My current record is 52. Up until Monday it had been 44 for over a year. Monday broke it and set the bar at 48. I'm not too sure what my next goal will be for juggling. I think 75 sounds like a good number.
Just two more days until South Africa 2010 starts!

20100607

Belt Brown

When I was younger my parents made sure I received a "classic" movie education. This meant I got to see all sorts of movies that were really worth seeing, including these:
Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (only tolerated because of my liking of Dick Van Dyke in Diagnosis Murder)
The three original Star Wars (now linked to my fascination with the newer three)
Rocky (only the first)
Independence Day. Yes, this one is VERY arguable, but almost nothing beats Will Smith saying "Welcome to Earth"
And
The Karate Kid 1&2. "Belt brown, hold up pants" is a great quote as well. To wrap up our German IV class, our teacher showed us The Karate Kid II in German. It's so cool to see it again. It's cool to see how much I have picked up in four years of high school German. It's nice to have seen a movie in one language and then in another. That really helps to pick up on what is going on. It's just a little ad that it means the end of my high school German career. I hope I can pick some more up as I continue to live.

20100605

Touch

I've been a Natasha Bedingfield fan for 5 years this summer. I've enjoyed every song she's put out, including the ones not released as singles and her covers. I won't explain the extent of my fandom since i will probably bore most of you to death before I even get to what I want to post about.
It's been a few years since Bedingfield released another album. The next one doesn't have a release date as of yet, but I believe its due late summer/early fall. She did release a song that will probably the first single off the new album. It's called Touch.
Touch is a peppy song about how every event in our lives are connected. It's illustrated by the event of Bedingfield spilling coffee on someone. That eventually leads to an unnamed man coming to a party she's holding at her house. It's a cool song. It's more techno than I would like, but I may just think that most of her other stuff is more guitar driven with techno in the background. There's no complaint about the techno. I'm looking forward to the new album whenever it may come. New music from a favorite artist is always appreciated.